


Step Four

by Verbyna



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anxiety Disorder, Bisexuality, Character Study, Gen, M/M, Male Friendship, Past Drug Addiction, Pre-Slash, Privilege, Recovery, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 07:06:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3125432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a casual drug user's best friend is the opposite of going to meetings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Step Four

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jedusaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedusaur/gifts).



> Many thanks to J for the prompt and beta. Title is the always-dreaded step 4 (moral inventory) from 12 step recovery programs.

Jack is messy and lazy and tests well. Jack is always on time for early practice and always around when Parse wants to go to the gym and he always brings the good booze, discreetly, to the party.

Jack is failing Chemistry, then Jack passes Chemistry. Jack only hyperventilates in a restroom stall four or five times a week. Jack’s first name doesn’t matter until it does.

Jack’s new pills agree with him. Jack needs to feel; Jack hates to feel, but he knows which chemicals agree with him. Jack knows his body. Jack is the top prospect and his lungs are always tight. He is profoundly aware of this.

Jack wants more, and more than anything, he wants silence, but he doesn’t die. He gets his silence instead. It agrees with him.

 

*

 

He doesn’t talk to Shitty about his time off. He doesn’t talk to Shitty about who he used to be, but he does talk, and it’s good for him. He has no idea why Shitty even likes him--the guy doesn’t have to hang out with his roommate, but somehow Jack is never alone when he doesn’t want to be alone.

It’s different when he’s working out with a friend instead of Parse. The first thing Shitty told him is that he loves hockey, but the second was that he has no intention of playing professionally. It’s not like Jack hasn’t thought about not playing professionally, but it was always abstract. He still thinks that loving the game is living the game, but it’s nice to know life can go on beyond that.

Their dorm room always smells like weed. He spends a lot of time at the library, at the rink, and at the gym.

 

*

 

He doesn’t go around calling himself an addict; the media’s said it enough that it might as well be his middle name. He doesn’t go to meetings after rehab. He can handle college life without a crutch, and cravings are just something he has to live with. He knows this. It’s all small steps to avoid a major fall.

The room always smells like weed, and Shitty doesn’t treat him like an addict. He learns that talking a lot is a small step, and Shitty is always willing to listen, joint pinched between forefinger and thumb five feet away. He talks about history a lot to keep his mouth busy: colonial trade, Prohibition, civil rights. He finds that he has a lot of opinions.

If his mouth is busy, all he has to do is shake his head when Shitty waves the joint at him companionably. He couldn’t say no, but he can always shake his head.

 

*

 

When things are overwhelming in dreams, his brain makes up pills and weed. Not booze, luckily, or painkillers, just good old anxiety meds and a joint. Safe things that he made unsafe because he can’t stop until his money runs out, except his money never runs out.

He’s high when he’s asleep and wakes up to sobriety. He keeps his nails clipped really short so his palms won’t bleed from clenching his fists so much at 6am. Sometimes he can’t unclench his fists, and even though nothing else is out of place, Shitty makes time to take him golfing. They keep their clubs stashed in the downstairs closet, behind the brooms and the card tables.

When they’re sufficiently sore, they sit down under a big old oak tree and Shitty starts rolling. Jack watches the horizon and resists the urge to roll better, because he didn’t stop being compulsive and competitive when he became an addict. He can’t acquire skills without honing them.

He doesn’t realize Shitty paid the two grand for his club membership until second term of freshman year. Money doesn’t run out for them. He doesn’t offer to pay Shitty back; he buys the best weed available in a fifteen-mile radius of campus and rolls Shitty the best joints of his life, and he feels like a good friend, like it’s a step forward, because he doesn’t think about himself at all while he does it.

 

*

 

He’s never had sex sober. He can barely remember all the sex he had when he was the golden boy, but he still comes out as bi to Shitty one time when he’s babbling. He tries to to take it back right away; it’s such a stupid fucking thing to tell anyone when he hasn’t even wanted anyone in years and he can never never really be out, even if he did want someone eventually and that person was a guy.

Shitty is sort of terrifying when he’s angry. Shitty’s stoned out of his mind, but he can still make Jack feel two feet tall and like he could take on the world unless Shitty kills him first for doubting it. When he doesn’t take it back again, Shitty tells him about his family, about the money and the expectations and the bespoke suits he hides at the back of his closet even if the drugs are on the nightstand. They talk for hours. It’s what Jack thought meetings would be like, when he saw them in movies instead of attending them in a circle at a blue-and-peach rehab facility he still dreams about sometimes.

He gives Shitty one of his emergency sleeping pills that night, and in the morning, they’re too groggy to avoid each other’s eyes.

Pretty soon after that he stops missing Parse. It feels like missing a step, because there’s still an empty spot where Parse used to be, right in the middle of his excuses. He knows he should stop making excuses, though. Shitty told him, and aside from Jack’s mother, Shitty is the most together person he knows.

 

*

 

They move into the Haus. Their rooms share a bathroom and they didn’t even have to do anyone’s laundry to get them. Jack is both touched and embarrassed that the seniors figured out how he functions, but he was slated for the C from day two and everyone loves Shitty, so he doesn’t offer retroactive payment. He doesn’t want to embarrass anyone.

There are parties. There’s alcohol, too, so he doesn’t remember them, but one morning he’s crying on the kitchen floor next to a disgusted girl he doesn’t know when half the team comes down for deep-fried breakfast. She leaves and Shitty makes sure no one disturbs him for eight hours, but the damage is done.

He goes to AA meetings for six weeks, even though no one expects him to go. People keep making concessions for him, like he’s as solid a person as he is a player, and it drives him up the wall. He can barely handle trust when he’s actually doing his best. When he inevitably lets these guys down, he wants it to be despite his best efforts. He wants to be passed out next to the finish line. He doesn’t want it to be because he couldn’t stop; he wants it to be because he couldn’t keep going.

He hates meetings. They’re full of people like him. He comes home to Shitty’s philosophical rants and wonders why some people can enjoy themselves without wanting to stop right there, where everything’s warm and makes sense, and nothing can hurt them.

 

*

 

He dreams that he’s drunk and high and winning the Stanley Cup and shaking his dad’s hand and his own hand isn’t shaking and he’s hitting the boards clean and his muscles are burning just right and Bitty’s drunk and laughing and smells like sugar and--

Fuck.

He should stay away from the kid, but he’s the captain and Bitty can’t take a hit. Jack knows anxiety, and he knows that the only way out is through. He just spent a summer confirming it. He doesn’t stay away, but he doesn’t get close, and it’s good enough.

 

*

 

It doesn’t work.

He stays away from things that are good for him until they kill him, but Bitty would only kill him with kindness, so it doesn’t work.

He catches bits of conversation from the Reading Room sometimes, when Shitty’s smoking up and Bitty is… Bitty. No one could really say anything if they caught him curled up in his armchair next to the window with a textbook. He studies better when Bitty brings out his speakers and the conversation’s just background noise.

He’s really used to the sound of Shitty’s voice.

 

*

 

It’s probably for the best that he was drilled in negotiation from the moment he could tape his own stick, because he holds his own and gets a decent contract to go with his degree. His parents are happy with him, pending his first rankings. Bitty bakes him a cake in his new team’s colours and posts a picture of him smiling from ear to ear on Twitter, which turns into the official announcement and goes viral.

They graduate and move to ridiculous apartments. Shitty’s still his best friend, even if the suits have migrated to the front of both their closets and sometimes he calls Jack when he’s off his fucking head to talk about Lardo and missed opportunities.

Jack’s got his foot in the door, on his own terms, but he still tastes sugar instead of blood at the back of his throat when he’s up against the boards. He can’t remember when that started, but he knows it won’t kill him and he’s better at doing the impossible than he is at being normal.

He texts Bitty back. He wants--he wants, and he can find a way to put up with the consequences. It’s been a long time since he’s let a panic attack keep him from trying.


End file.
